Andrew Ross - 'Empty room, Masonic St, Masterton, 6-10-2001'. Silver-gelatine photograph, 20x25cm. This photograph is in the Te Papa collection and features in the exhibition 'New Zealand Photography Collected'. Andrew Ross is represented in New Zealand by Photospace Gallery, Wellington.

These days, communication is a big part of what we do in our paranormal group, but from day one it's been important in every aspect of things. From writing for the website, blogs, and articles, posting and commenting on social media (we maintain a public Facebook page and a Closed Group for discussions), and long-running email communications with clients, to talking to clients directly, working with the news media, and occasional public speaking engagements, most of us in paranormal team leadership and client management roles spend more of our time on communicating than we do in active investigation. For me, the emphasis has gradually shifted from one role to the other over the ten-or-so years since our paranormal group was founded. Certainly, running round in old, deserted buildings at night armed with EMF meters, voice recorders and full spectrum video cameras is a lot more fun than evenings indoors typing into a computer; and, frankly, this is not really exactly what I signed up for. But it’s still more interesting than evidence reviewing!

The theme of the talk/event was The Gothic in New Zealand Art, and my co-speaker was the Curator of Modern Art at Te Papa, Chelsea Nichols (4th curator down on this page). So having someone with a Ph.D. in art history to help carry the can meant I was freer to talk about the paranormal aspects without having to attempt to sound academic.

James Gilberd (hiding behind his coffee) and Chelsea Nichols discussing tactics before the event. Photograph by Sam Featherstone.

One aspect of this talk was the relationship between early original photographic works in the exhibition of Athol McCredie's book ‘New Zealand Photography Collected’ and the presence or spirit of the people photographed. Sometimes it is joked about that primitive peoples thought photography was magic and that taking a photograph of someone was akin to stealing their soul; but, like many superstitions, there is an element of truth in it. Certainly, in the nineteenth century (at least before 1890, when the Kodak ‘Brownie’ snapshot camera put photography in the hands of the people), the only folk who understood photography were professional photographers and scientists. To the rest it was a complete mystery, if not somewhat magical.

The Daguerreotype was the first commercial form of photography and was used in the early portrait studios. If you’ve seen Mike Leigh's 2014 film Mr Turner, there’s a humorous scene where the artist enters such a studio to have his portrait made. He has to sit still for quite some time while enough of the window light reflected off his face and body is collected by the camera lens and focused onto the sensitised metal plate to make an image. (An iron neck brace is used to hold his head still.) I remember a friend taking a indoor portrait of me using a large format, sheet film camera, which required a shutter speed of about 10 seconds. Unlike a snapshot, I was very aware of the time that the lens was open and the image was forming. As I looked into the opening in the lens it felt very much like my personal energy was being drawn into the camera, and I wanted the Te Papa audience to understand this and try to have a similar experience.

Preparing to take the Te Papa group photographs. Photo by Sam Featherstone.

After looking at the centuried Daguerreotypes on display, which were direct, first-generation images of their subjects (more closely related to their subjects than second-generation prints from a negative), I demonstrated that light really is energy by holding up an old selenium-cell light meter facing the gallery lights and showing the meter needle moving. There is no battery in this meter: it’s the energy of the light that moves the needle, via a small electric current generated when photons strike the gold-selenium sensor. Then I got everyone to stand very still in a group for thirty seconds while I took their photo. While the shutter was open I asked them to be very aware of their energy being captured on the light-sensitive film. (The two photos were taken on a Hasselblad SWC camera like this one.)

Photograph taken with a 1970s Hasselblad SWC (Super-wide camera). Photo: James Gilberd

For the second photo (below), I asked some people to remain still, others to move a little or a lot, and some to walk away after a time to create photographic ghosts. The array of lights coming in from the top of the photo is caused by lens flare from the gallery lighting. I had to take these photos a bit hurriedly as we were running short of time, but I like this accidental effect, which adds a little 'supernaturalness'.

Photograph taken with a 1970s Hasselblad SWC (Super-wide camera). Photo: James Gilberd

The thing about talking to such a group – one which was largely brought together via publicity Te Papa put out, so to me it comprised mostly strangers – is that they’re hard to read; you can’t really tell how what you’re saying is being received. And even though both Chelsea and I tried at times during the evening to encourage people to relate their own paranormal experiences and beliefs, people are understandably reticent when to talk about such things in public, in front of other strangers. After all, some people might think maybe your cheese has slipped off your cracker.

When I tell people I’m going to be speaking at such and such and I’m really nervous about it, the advice I'm usually offered is just this: be yourself. The jury's still out on whether it’s good advice, in my case. But, still, I look forward to the next opportunity to speak in public and so perhaps make some contribution to people's understanding and appreciation of things in the paranormal realm, even if, or especially if, the topic intersects with other fields of interest, such as art.

The Andrew Ross photograph above is not in the Te Papa exhibition, but I referred to it in my slide talk because of the effect of light streaks apparently emanating from the letterbox. The photographer has no idea what caused this particular, strange photographic anomaly.

In a recent article, Photography and the Paranormal, we looked at modern, digital photographic anomalies and how they can appear paranormal, but there are often rational explanations for them. This time I’d like to concentrate on some older, pre-digital photographs. We’re talking about the classic unexplained photos – those that crop up a lot in books and in lists on the ‘net. You may be relieved that this is an area largely free of orbs!

Thing is, we can’t analyse old photos properly if we don’t have access to either the original negatives or photographic prints made directly from them; we’re reliant on reproductions in books or onscreen, which are often poor quality and may have been further tampered with. (Search for a particular photo online and see how varied the copies of it are.) As well, there are reports on the origins of the photos and the stories behind them, but these can be hard to verify since we can’t talk to the people involved. For these reasons, when considering the merits of the photos and genuineness of claims relating to the phenomena they depict, we’re limited to guesswork.

Still, we can apply some of the techniques we’ve learned for evaluating modern digital photos, as only the recording medium has changed (electronic sensor chips rather than light-sensitive chemistry). The optics and other physics of photography that cause photographic anomalies remain the same (in principal if not in scale), as does the psychology of the visual interpretation of the subject matter.

We say ‘possibly genuine’ because we can never absolutely rule out all of the first four reasons for something appearing to be paranormal. To claim something as paranormal is an ‘argument from ignorance’ – a logical fallacy – because however thorough we are, there may be a normal cause that we’ve overlooked. ‘Possibly genuine’ is, I’m afraid, as far as we dare go in making a claim for any paranormal phenomenon captured in a photograph.

So let’s get down to some well-known examples of photos that fall into these four categories (at least in my opinion – you may beg to differ).

The Solway Firth Spaceman

Wow, there’s a lot online about this one. My initial opinion was that there’s a person standing with their back to the camera some distance behind the girl, and research bears that out. The bend of the right arm shows the figure is facing away from camera (so that’s not a visor!), and the degree of blurriness is consistent with it being some 5 metres behind the girl.

If, as some claim, the figure is a toy (“Mark Apollo” or similar), it would appear in much sharper focus, being positioned close behind the girl’s head. Also, how would it be held there? What some say are threads are actually scratches on the print or negative. It would have to be taped to a stick or something. But really, why?

The camera used, a German 35mm SLR, has a good quality standard lens, one unlikely to produce a major aberration. The camera’s design makes it clumsy to use, so it’s probable that the photographer was fiddling with the camera between shots, leaving plenty of time for someone to wander in and out of frame. The restricted viewfinder, which shows only about ¾ of the recorded picture, is another reason why he might not notice a person in the background.

Another photo from a different position shows the girl’s mother sprawling to the right of frame. Her figure and clothing, over-exposed in the main photo by the direct sunlight, is consistent with the predominant theory of her being the ‘Spaceman’. (A lot of detail is lost due to over-exposure and lack of focus.)

Nothing about the photo suggests the negative was tampered-with or that it was faked by another method. If it was, I’m sure we’d see a much more obvious and unambiguous spaceman. Even before Photoshop, there were plenty of people around who could easily produce better fake photos than this one, in camera or in the darkroom. This is no such production.

The conspiracy-related mythology associated with the photograph (the visit from Men in Black, the link to the Woomera ‘spacemen’ and the Blue Streak rocket manufacture and aborted launch, etc) is just that: myth. None of it is substantiated and the links are tenuous at best. It all falls into the ‘believe-it-or-don’t’ basket.

Verdict: Category 2 - Accidental Fake. (Going along with it - saying nothing to correct misconceptions - amounts to lying as far as this category is concerned.)

The Washington DC Incident

A wrongly-associated story relates to 7 objects detected on radar and seen heading towards the Capitol Building in 1952. The photograph that often accompanies the account was allegedly taken in 1965. It’s probably been used so misleadingly because of a lack of photos of the reported incident, and so one's opinion of this photo should not affect one’s belief in accounts of the said UFO incident.

Although the best photo online has been copied from a book and may be cropped and slightly distorted, it’s accurate enough for this test. There are other ways of establishing the same thing, but here’s what I did: (1) open the image in Adobe Photoshop and make a duplicate layer; (2) flip the duplicate layer both vertically and horizontally; (3) make the layer 50% transparent to reveal the original photo underneath; (4) shift the layer sideways until the lights line up with their mirror images in the closest combination. You can see the small, sharper light spots from the sky appear inside the larger, overexposed images of the bright lights on the building. The spacing of both sets of lights is clearly equivalent when translated through the optical centre of the photograph. This is not a coincidence.

Another way of doing this is to find the centre of the photo then draw lines through it to connect the lights on the building with their corresponding lights in the sky, which are in the opposite quadrant. Both of these techniques illustrate the common photographic anomaly of secondary images due to internal lens reflections.

Verdict: Category 3 -. Photographic Anomaly.

The Black Monk of Brockley Court

According to Ian Wilson, in ‘In Search of Ghosts’ (Headline, London, 1996, pp.45-46), this photograph was deliberately faked by dentistry student Arthur Spencer Palmer and his younger brother Charles in 1909 by double exposure in the camera with Arthur wrapped in a sheet. This was done in jest, but the brothers didn’t own up to the hoo-ha the photo attracted. After WWI, in which Charles was killed in action, Arthur set up his dental practice in Nairobi, Kenya. There, he happened to attend a public talk by the famous writer and Spiritualism-obsessive Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and was surprised to see his photograph paraded as evidence of the hereafter. He stood up in the crowd and proclaimed, ‘I am that ghost!’ He was invited on stage and he explained the trick. This incident made the newspapers in England and abroad.

So it was surprising, Wilson says, to see Peter Underwood publish the very same photo in his 1985 book ‘The Ghost Hunters’ and list it as a probably-genuine ghost photo taken by ‘an unknown war correspondent’.

Verdict: Category 1 - Deliberate Fake.

Category 4, the pareidolia/simulacra one, is a little harder because we can’t get access to a clear enough versions of a photo to make the call. But of course it’s a photo’s lack of clarity that gives rise to this type of ambiguity. One example could be the famous photo of a possible spiritual presence in the back seat of a car. Maybe certain elements in the photo – reflections, shadows, some unknown objects in the car, and film grain, are combining to appear to be a human figure – a simulacra.

Let’s put it in Category 4 for now, but it’s a hard call. It could even be considered a Category 5.

Possibly genuinely paranormal photos?

So, what of Category 5 – the possibly genuine paranormal photo? Confining things to ghosts for now (as I’m really not up on UFO or cryptid photos) and looking at ‘paranormal photos not proven fake’ lists online, I still think that extreme long exposure accounts for most of the unknown presences in photos. This is little-understood by non-expert photographers (which would be most people who’ve published opinions on the photos!) but believe me when I say that odd things happen when exposures start to run into many seconds, let alone minutes; and this was common for most photos taken indoor light in the past, on film that was barely light-sensitive by today’s standards. I think the famous Tulip Staircase ghost, for example, is simply a person ascending the stairs unnoticed by the photographer, who was busy trying to hold his camera still against a wall during the exposure of 5-6 seconds. It would be a simple to reproduce the same effect when given a similar physical layout.

My top three candidates for Category 5: the Raynham Hall ghost on the stairs (mostly because of the account of its taking and development); Freddy Jackson’s ghost in the 1919 group photo of RAF pilots; and one from Australia, the ‘Observer at Corroboree Rock’ photo, taken near Alice Springs by an Adelaide Presbyterian minister R.S. Blance in 1959. While any of these could be due to photographic anomalies, the result of confusion of facts, or poor observation, I can’t find anything on the ‘net that clearly demonstrates they’re fakes.

Conclusion

A book such as ‘Ghosts Caught on Film’ by Dr Melvin Willin (David & Charles, Cincinnati, 2007) is full of examples of possible paranormal photos, and the commentary is somewhat skeptical but very much ‘let the viewer decide’, which is fine. Picking a few published examples that engage you and then researching them online and in books will of course present you with a range of opinions. Cries of ‘fake!’ are common, usually made in ignorance of other possibilities. Deliberate fakes aren’t as prevalent as you might think; they’re far outweighed by accidents and anomalies—photos taken in all innocence that have caught the public imagination. I’ve enjoyed learning a little about these few photos for this article, and I’m quite prepared to change my view (which is temporary) on any of them if shown strong evidence and/or a convincing argument. There could be at least one more article in this.

Additional note

‘The negative has not been tampered with,’ a photographic expert said.

When researching old photos, you will often come across a statement like this. Usually the actual expert is unnamed. And tampering with the negative is but one way of faking a photo. The film itself won’t tell of any jiggery-pokery in the printing process, such as compositing an image in the darkroom using multiple negatives. (We’re ignoring Photoshop, which has only been around since the early 1990s, and I can attest it was difficult to make a convincing fake negative with 20th century film recording technology.)

Examining a negative might reveal things like:

faulty processing, chemical or other stains, or physical damage to the film emulsion that might translate rather strangely on the print

misalignment of the edge of the image (compared with neighbouring frames), suggesting tampering in the camera

a double or overlapping edge to the frame (cropped out when printed), suggesting double-exposure

the negative has been retouched with ink, paint or dye, or locally bleached with an agent such as ferricyanide – all techniques commonly used to remove blemishes from portraits, etc, but perhaps to create a deception

the frame has been individually cut away from a strip of negatives, denying the opportunity to compare it to other photos taken on the same film, which could be a little suspicious.

With published photographs, we're usually reliant on a photographic expert's testimony as the to above. Personally, I have seen a few actual vintage ("original") prints but have never had the opportunity to examine the negative of a purportedly-paranormal photograph, as it was inaccessible, lost or destroyed. One day...

“I have told you that I was of sceptical habit; but though I understood little or nothing, I began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the iterated dogmas of science that all life is material, and that in the system of things there is no undiscovered land, even beyond the remotest stars, where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet there struck in on this the thought that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that science itself merely dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place.”

- Arthur Machen, 1895, from the story ‘The Novel of the Black Seal’

Arthur Machen, born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Gwent, Wales, 1863, was an interesting character. His short story 'The Bowmen', mistaken for an actual occurrence during a WWI battle, was responsible for the Angels of Mons episode.

I attended the 2014 Paracon at Maitland Gaol and the 2015 Paracon at The Carrington Hotel in Katoomba, NSW, as a speaker both times. This time I just wanted to go along and enjoy the thing as a punter (or as a Delegate, as it said on my tag - very flash) and also to take my wife and fellow paranormal investigator Denise along and actually stay in the Carrington this time. That was a good decision. Even the cheapest room was wonderful, with the shared tiled bathroom just down the hall. It felt like being an an Agatha Christie murder mystery and we half expected Hercule Poirot to appear at any moment.

The idea was to relax and take in the 2016 Paracon piecemeal while catching up with conference organiser Alex Cayas and other friends made at the previous conferences, and meet some new people. We also wanted to enjoy the hotel and the scenic beauty of the Blue Mountains National Park area surrounding the town of Katoomba. I was relieved to find the Elephant Bean Cafe still going strong and making superb coffee, but it's not the only place.

I've already made numerous comments on the Paracon Australia Facebook page about how much we appreciate the huge effort Alex Cayas and his team have made three years in a row to make the Paracon a reality, so I won't repeat myself here (but Paracon really is awesome - and I don't use that word often, or lightly). Rather, I wanted to use this blog to discuss just a few of the talks I attended.

Carrington entrance statue

'Paralosophy' - Brian Cano

Brian Cano's talk was at 9am Saturday (and repeated the same time on Sunday morning, an even worse slot), so if I didn't grasp 100% of it, that's the reason. He's an engaging speaker, and working without props or projected slides he managed to hold the audience's attention for an hour. The theme was his journey from Skeptic to Scientist, and he outlined the difference as he sees it. I guess in the world of paranormal investigation, as seen on TV, the distinction is valid; skeptics are often portayed as the people who pour cold water on any hope of witnessing or capturing paranormal phenomena. "It's just not possible. What you have here is a [blah blah] and Occam's Razor says that the mundane explanation rules." The Scientist, on the other hand, observes, measures, gathers evidence, and does not judge or reach premature or unscientific conclusions. (I'm paraphrasing, not exactly quoting Brian - I didn't make any notes or even take a photo, sorry.)

My take is that all scientists worth their salt are also skeptics, as skepticism - that is, critical thinking, questioning assumptions and accepting nothing until the evidence shows that it is indeed the case - is one of the cornerstones of Scientific Method. The difference between Scientist and Skeptic is not quite so in the wider world. Wikipedia puts it like this:- A scientific (or empirical) skeptic is one who questions beliefs on the basis of scientific understanding. Most scientists, being scientific skeptics, test the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation using some form of the scientific method.[17] As a result, a number of claims are considered "pseudoscience" if they are found to improperly apply or ignore the fundamental aspects of the scientific method. Scientific skepticism may discard beliefs pertaining to things outside perceivable observation and thus outside the realm of systematic, empiricalfalsifiability/testability.

Basically, I was onside with Brian's talk, and so maybe I'm being pedantic here. It was early in the morning, after all. His journey in the paranormal field interests me, particularly as I think it's similar to my own but he's maybe farther along the road. I wanted to discuss this with him during the conference but he was rather the centre of a lot of attention so the opportunity didn't quite present itself. I want to learn more.

An aside: many paranormal investigators claim to employ a scientific approach but some of those have no idea what that involves, or they have misunderstood it due to a total lack of education in science. But that's another blog entirely. I had a bit of a go it it here, a while ago.

Richard Saunders' speaking in The Ballroom

Richard Saunders - the first genuine, dyed-in-the-wool skeptic to speak at Paracon Australia

Richard's talk ran from 7pm-8pm on Saturday and unfortunately clashed with Michelle Taylor's talk, which was better-attended. I was delighted that a true skeptic was included in the speaker lineup for this conference, and Richard Saunders was a fine choice. Given that he could've potentially been about as welcome as a pork chop at a Jewish wedding (sorry, I can't think of a more PC simile at this hour), he presented well, stuck to the script and was engaging, interesting, and a credit to his calling.

A woman asked a question at the end, using the phrase 'low-hanging fruit' a couple of times. I could sort-of understand what she was getting at, but her question needed to be phrased differently for Richard to answer it adequately.

I think what she meant was the people who were tested for the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge were attempting to demonstrate paranormal abilities that were relatively simple to disprove by scientific testing (dowsing, remote viewing - the low-hanging fruit), but what about some of the stuff that happens unpredictably, sporadically, almost at random, but defies rational explanation? Because it cannot be summoned for repeatable testing, it cannot be claimed as a paranormal ability and tested scientifically.

I have had several experiences in my life that defy explanation, and I've read all the skeptics' books and fully understand all of the expanations for everything that they present, but still no dice. I know I'm not alone in having had unexplainable experiences, and I think this is what the woman's question was about. It's the 5%, or the 1%, or most likely the tiny fraction of 1% of all possible instances of paranormal activity that just might be the real deal that keep us all in this game. And unfortunately these events will probably never be amenable to testing by Scientific Method, and that's where we're stuck for the forseeable future, or maybe until the next big breakthough.

Paul Bradford & Shawn Porter of Ghoststop

Speaking of skeptics, both these guys (Shawn from the US, Paul a Brit) included a healthy dose of skepticism in their talk, as well as plenty of humour. But then, they make and sell a bunch of equipment specially for paranormal investigation, ghost hunting, or whatever you want to call it, all of which needs skepticsm applied in shovel loads.

So, while it's good to be skeptical about ghost boxes, (they were, explaining why the results from various types of ghost box should not be used as evidence to present to a client, but it was fine to experiment with them), there really is no firm evidence that EMF meters (Ghoststop's or anyone else's) can detect ghostly activity, or that ghosts can be captured on film or video, even using their full spectrum (infra-red + visible light + ultraviolet) -adapted video and stills cameras.

'Beyond the flashlight' was an engaging talk that got me thinking about my own and our Strange Occurrences team's approach and use of the gear we have - all of it adapted from other spheres and rather old school by the Ghoststop guys' definition. So thanks, guys. You rocked.

Shawn & Paul from Ghoststop. Sorry for the crappy pix. I just used my cheap cellphone.

And anything that gets you thinking is good. Right? Along with the stuff mentioned in paragraph 1, that's what you go to these things for. Isn't it? I'm pleased I made the effort.

I hope the next Australian Paracon, wherever and whenever it's held, will be as much of a success or even more. I also hope a few more of my fellow countrymen see the worth of hopping across the Tasman for it. (There will never be anything like it in New Zealand, so don't hold your breath.) It's not a big deal money-wise. I'm struggling financially like everyone else, and taking a few days away from my business is tough (as I'm finding out this week, trying to catch up), but with plenty of notice to save and prepare, we were able to get there. It's just a matter of priorities.

I'm really unsure about saying this in public, but here goes it anyway. Speaking as the leader of a paranormal investigation team that formed in 2005 and has been reasonably active since 2007, it's damned hard to get an investigation these days!

I'm not talking about private residence investigations, but the big sites that involve the entire team and all the gear; the public buildings, museums, theatres, old hospitals. I miss those.

I know our Strange Occurrences team has a rep for being more skeptical than some, but we just follow the dictum of trying hard to find natural explanations for reported paranormal phenomena and not leaping to conclusions about paranormal causes, as do all the better teams around the world. We understand that this may put a few people off, but mostly those who just want affirmation of their beliefs, or maybe some publicity for their ailing business.

But I know for a fact that it's not just us experiencing a lull. Haunted Auckland is the most active paranormal group in NZ, then there are a couple of other active teams as well as Strange Occs. That's four, or five max. active teams in the whole country.

While some investigations go unposted due to client privacy, most investigators at least like to let others know when they've got something on. Assuming this, the number of major investigations conducted on average by all the teams in the country has declined significantly in the last two to three years. Some teams appear to not have done an investigation at all in that period, others have done barely a handful. And some teams appear to have given up entirely, their websites static or vanished, their Facebook pages languishing with just a few shared overseas posts or none at all.

Not that Facebook or website activity are always reliable indicators of an investigation team's real-life activity. Strange Occurrences's website stats would make some commercial website operators' eyes water, and our FB presence is going from strength to strength. Also, pretty much everyone is considerate and polite on both the FB public page and the closed group, which is a joy. But it doesn't hide the fact that we're not doing nearly as many on-site investigations as in the past.

So, if we admit that this is the way things are now, then why is it?

In the last few years I've had quite a few big investigations slip through my fingers at the last hurdle (mixing metaphors - ha ha). This has most often been because, after much effort, finally the 'gatekeeper' has said No. This has been discouraging, and I mostly blame OSH (Occupational Safety and Health). I have nothing against OSH, rather I applaud the great job they do in making workplaces safer for everyone. But seriously now; the wider culture that's grown in society (for which OSH is partly responsible and partly a result of) is that everyone has become so risk averse they're afraid to give permission for anything, let alone for a team of paranormal investigators to operate on their premises. Why? Maybe they think we're going to '﻿﻿cross the streams﻿﻿'.

Although we're all responsible, mature adults, cautious and careful in the manner in which we conduct ourselves, the perception is that if one of us were to have an accident, then the person "who let those damned ghost busters in" would find their head on the chopping block. This is perfectly understandable, but it still does us no good. And I could be wrong but I don't believe waivers of liability, however well-worded, will solve the problem.

The other issue, related to the above, is the earthquake status of many buildings subsequent to the tragic earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010 and 2011. In Wellington, many historic buildings are no-go areas because of their earthquake-prone status. This may even have a knock-on effect on risk-averseness relating to non-earthquake-prone buildings.

I also wonder if the wave of general interest in 'ghost hunting' hasn't just petered out. If the popularity of TAPS and Most Haunted grasped the public imagination in the mid-2000s, the proliferation of later ghost hunting shows, which must have surely reached saturation point a while back, may have dulled it. Is everyone just ghost-hunted out? There's little interest in parapsychology, UFOs and cryptids at the moment too; it all goes in waves.

If so, this would be consistent with interest levels in the paranormal historically. The 1960s and 70s were hot with ESP and psychic powers with Uri Geller and others on TV regularly, and there was huge interest in cryptozoology (Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, etc), and UFOs (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and wonderful TV series such as 'Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World'. Many general and specialised books on the paranormal were published in these decades, even the authoritative Time/Life group produced a lavish set of volumes, 'Mysteries of the Unknown'. But the level of public interest had markedly decreased by the late 80s, when these books came out.

While earlier TV series, such as the amateurish 'Ghost Detectives' (the British show from 2001, theatrically hosted by Tom Baker of Doctor Who fame), gave more emphasis to mediums, psychics and dowsers while the 'tech' boys mainly chased dust orbs with their early digital cameras and clunky DV systems, TAPS showed the way to a more savvy, technology-based method of investigating, which was taken up by the proliferation of new paranormal investigation groups and ghost hunters the world over (including S.O., at least in part). It's fair to say that this movement was largely technology-driven, because the availability of everything techy expanded while the price of everything contracted. The arrival of broadband internet in most homes and workplaces played a big part in both the popularity of ghost hunting shows and access to the gear to hunt ghosts with.

It seems that this current wave of interest in the paranormal (with its main focus on ghosts) is now breaking on the shoreline.

Perhaps the release of the movie Ghostsbusters 3 in July will breathe new life into the scene. In the meantime, we at Strange Occurrences are conducting things a little differently these days. Last August's name change to ﻿﻿New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society﻿ was the first turn of the ship's steering wheel, and we're still turning it. The plan is to move the focus from site investigations to more of a communication, education and discussion-facilitating role. I see Haunted Auckland are doing this too, with organised, participatory public events, and the two books founder Mark Wallbank has written and produced with help from others in his team. Both Mark and I were speakers at Paracon Australia in ﻿2014﻿ and ﻿2015﻿ and attendees in 2016, which has been part of this journey.

Strange Occurrences has a tasty investigation and other activities lined up for June, some good things to get stuck into upon my return from the Paracon, but there's no denying the semi-drought of 'real' paranormal investigations that shows little sign of breaking. I'm not as connected as some to what overseas groups are getting up to these days, but one indicator is a wonderful US-based organisation I used to have to pay a goodly sum of US dollars to subscribe to - paranexus.org - stopped charging membership fees a few years ago now. Sadly, it is but a shadow of its former self.

What are your views and experiences of this situation? Please comment away.﻿

OK, this is part review, part unashamed plug. Mark Wallbank, founder of the paranormal group Haunted Auckland, generously sent me a copy of his new book, 'Talking to Shadows', which arrived yesterday. I found myself reading in until very late last night. It's full of accounts of Haunted Auckland's investigations, team members' experiences, and thoughts and advice on paranormal investigation by the author and various others experienced in the paranormal field in NZ and Australia. While I would take issue with much of the chapter 'The paranormal vs. science...', 'I found the chapters 'I've been thinking' and 'No excuses' to be very honest and down-to-earth. They represent self-questioning views with a voice of reason and with depth of thought, sadly rare things in the paranormal field. 'No excuses' is humorously self-deprecating, showing that the author has his ego in check and is not claiming to be some kind of know-it-all paranormal expert. In fact, the entire book raises more questions than answers, which is to its credit.Minor gripes: most photos are not captioned, and editing and proofreading could've been a little more thorough, but the book is well structured and reads easily. I only put 'Talking to Shadows' down when my eyes were too tired for more, otherwise I would've read it cover to cover, and at 392 pages it is a substantial book!There is lots of food for thought here, so I'd recommend 'Talking to Shadows' to anyone generally interested in the paranormal and especially to those actively involved in paranormal investigation, or who are thinking of getting into it. While not intended to serve as a manual, 'Talking to Shadows' contains a wealth of information derived from experience that would otherwise take years, and many blunders, to find out for oneself.

An Update on Orbs: photographic anomalies in paranormal investigation - by James Gilberd.

Some readers will have heard my talk ‘Photography and the Paranormal’ at Paracon Australia 2015. You may have been one of the people who came up after and said, ‘I’m really glad you explained orbs in that way,’ or you may have sat politely and perhaps ground your teeth a bit. Thing is, not everyone wants to hear what may be a rational explanation for something they genuinely believe is paranormal. Likewise, I don’t much like it when lazy skeptics dismiss possibility of ghosts with pat, armchair explanations; it’s just this / it’s just that / it’s all in your mind / you’re totally wasting your time even bothering to look; because I think they’re being dogmatic, conventional-minded, and may well be missing something really, really important. (Not all skeptics are like this, but that’s another topic.) Truth is, I am a skeptic when it comes to photographs, but at least I take the time to look closely at each photo, ask questions and remain open to the possibility that there is something there.

So, when (or if) you read this article, please don’t regard it as dogma. The purpose of it is to help to understand some of the common photographic anomalies that are easily mistaken for paranormal phenomena. Also please note that if I give an opinion on a photo, it is just that: an opinion. Interpretation and meaning is ultimately personal. If your uncle recently passed away and an orb appears just over his head in the last photo ever taken of him alive, who am I to tell you it’s just a bit of dust?

Dust orbs

These little chaps began to crop up in large numbers early this century, when small, cheap digital cameras came into common use. These new cameras had more compact optical systems than their 35mm film predecessors, with lenses that had lots more depth of field (meaning when they were focused out into a room, objects only a few centimeters away, such as airborne dust and moisture droplets, could appear partially in focus). Also, the flash was typically situated close to the lens, so it would light up the area just in front of the lens and highlight said objects. Voila – orbs! At this time the new wave of TV ghost hunting shows hit our screens, which was like throwing petrol on the barbecue as far as paranormal claims for orbs were concerned. (For a detailed explanation of how tiny objects manifest as orbs, go to the Photos/Orbs section of www.strange-occurrences.com.)

But one fine specimen from the wide realm of dust orbs.

Changing technology

What will surprise few of you is that the majority of the more recent photos that show suspected paranormal phenomena (ghost apps aside) have been taken on cellphone cameras. With this change in the prevalent camera technology has come a shift in the frequency and the way certain anomalies appear. The photographic principals of phone cameras are the same but the scale of the optics is much smaller than even the most compact of dedicated digital cameras. Depth of field is so great that objects extremely close to the lens, or touching it, are rendered in the photo. Try placing a hair across the lens of a DSLR camera; it won’t show in the photo at all. Then try it with your phone camera (with the LED flash on) and woohoo – ectoplasm!

Playing with a fine hair near or touching the lens of a phone camera with its LED flash switched on.

Also, due to the flat profile of the cellphone and the way it’s usually held to take a photo, there is no shielding of the lens from stray light, so lens flare has become a more common factor in anomalous photos. Lens flare occurs when light which is not part of the image, and/or any bright light source within the image area, gets into the lens and interferes with the camera's ability to render a clear image of the scene.

Flare orbs

If you look at the surface a camera lens at a certain angle you’ll see its anti-glare coating, which is slightly irridescent, like oil on water. It’s similar to the coating on modern eyeglasses, and it turns out that lens flare that manages to penetrate the coating usually gets coloured by it. So what we’ve been receiving by email recently have been little round, coloured orbs (often green) that look a bit like dust orbs, but aren’t. (Dust orbs require flash, flare orbs don’t.) They occur mostly when there’s a very bright light in the photo, maybe the sun or the moon, or a streetlight or naked light bulb. The Flare Orb (we’ll call it) is often in the opposite part of the photo to the light source, so if the sun (say) is in the top left of your photo, look for a flare orb on the bottom right. You can usually draw a line through the approximate centre of the frame to connect the two.

In this photo, taken with a DSLR camera in Wellington’s historic (and reportedly haunted) St James Theatre, there’s a small flare orb caused by the bright lightbulb. The line-through-the-centre theory is a little off in this example. Photo: James Gilberd

Flare orbs stand out best when there’s a dark area behind them (see examples, cropped in from some photos we've received), but still occur in light areas – you just won’t notice them, for the same reason you can’t see the stars during the daytime.

Above: Flare orbs from different photos, different cameras, but all with the sun low in the sky, within the photo frame or slightly outside it.

When strong light strikes a lens with some dust on it, or with a greasy fingerprint (as often happens with cellphones) things can really get crazy, with the flare pattern spreading across the lens and doing bizarre things. And when the phone applies digital sharpening to the image data, then compresses it into a much smaller JPEG file for transmission, more stuff happens to the photo. It’s hardly surprising that orbs, lens flares and other anomalies can end up looking like extra-terrestrials or giant floating amoeba and scare the crud out of people. See 'Alien Bug in New York' on this page.

Experiment

The best way to learn to recognise these photographic anomalies is to try to reproduce them for yourself with your own cameras. I spent a while trying to get little green flare orbs like the ones people sent in, but found that none of my cameras would make me one. However they did produce their own versions; not in every shot, and only if I held my tongue right.

The same seen taken with a Nikon DSLR camera and standard (cheap) zoom lens. There’s much less flare effect than with the phone camera. Photo by James Gilberd

Detail of lens flare artefact from a similar photo; same camera, but held at a slightly different angle and with a wider zoom setting. Photo: J.Gilberd

Detail from photo on left showing lens flare artefact, which resembles a fuchsia flower. Photo: J.Gilberd

The benefit of understanding these anomalies by deliberately creating them yourself is to see what is normal and not paranormal. This is important if you’re involved in paranormal investigation, because it could help avoid that embarrassing situation where something is offered up as evidence of paranormal activity when in fact there is a perfectly natural explanation for the thing, and you end up with egg on your face (as has happened to me, and to most of us at one time or another). In the eyes of the scientific community, and even the general public, we in the paranormal field have some credibility issues, so the less egg we end up with on our collective face, the better.

The is really strange stuff out there: unexplained stuff, unaccepted stuff, paranormal stuff, and we all want to find it, experience it, document it and try to understand it. Photography and videography are great tools for documenting and learning about things. Cameras are constantly improving and are increasingly able to show things well beyond the range of human vision, and they’re becoming cheaper to obtain and easier to use.

Despite finding that many paranormal photos probably have mundane explanations, I’m still excited about the uses of photography in exploring the paranormal, with the present technology and with what’s yet to come. I hope you are too. Keep at it, and if you capture something you don’t fully understand and would like a second opinion on, please email me and my team at strangeoccs@gmail.com

Each page of the NZ Strange Occurrences Society site now has a different black & white header photograph. But aside from overlaying text on the actual image, there's no way of captioning them, or of viewing the entire photo for that matter. So here they all are in one place, with caption info. All photos are by James Gilberd, except where noted as by Rob Wilson, the group's main photographer.

28th August, 2010

The investigation was as good as over. The three of us remaining at the site; Rob, Patrick and I, were sitting upstairs in the glassed-in balcony of the Nurses’ Home with a view over the old Fever Hospital complex. We’d made one last attempt in the upstairs corridor to contact anything that might be present, and despite my being more provocative than usual, there was no reaction. We turned off our voice recorders and let the conversation drift to cars, Top Gear and so forth, to pass the time till the security guards arrived to lock the buildings up. The wind had dropped away to nothing by this time, and the night air had fallen utterly quiet. Then BAM. It sounded like a door slamming downstairs, and we felt its impact shudder through the wooden floor. We looked at each other for a long moment before deciding to head down and check it out.

As we filed quickly down the dusty staircase, I was thinking that either some trespasser had slammed the door or it was some of the timber and old unhinged doors that the builders had left stacked around the walls of the Nurses’ Home that had collapsed onto the floor.

After checking out the entire ground floor we found nothing had fallen over and there was no one inside the building. We settled on the offending door being the small one on the north side that opened out to the covered walkway to the main hospital. It was still open, as we’d left it. Verifying there was no wind, we concluded that there must be some person creeping around the Fever Hospital site. Its isolation on the bush-clad slopes of Mount Victoria in Wellington city had long made it an attractive place for daredevils willing to brave the security patrols to check out the place’s haunted reputation for themselves.

As we left the building to check outside, Patrick closed the offending door securely behind us. We’d not walked ten metres into the car park when we heard another mighty slam, this time from right behind us. We spun round as one. The door remained closed. The air remained still.

This was one of those hair-raising moments you always hope to experience on an investigation, but when it actually happens it ain’t so much fun.

Ground floor corridor, Nurses’ Home, 2010. Photo: James Gilberd

My hair was still standing on end when we went back inside and checked the ground floor of the building once again. But we knew that if anyone had been prowling around in there they’d appear on at least one of the three IR security cameras we’d set up earlier to cover the ground floor. Avoiding the temptation to review the footage straight away (because we were pretty sure there was no one about), we shifted the downstairs corridor camera to cover the slamming door, then we went back around the corner into the hallway and hunched over the video monitor. All three of us stared at the infrared image of the now-motionless door.

After a few minutes of this, I said, ‘This is hopeless. A watched pot never boils.’ So we decided to go off and explore the main hospital one last time. We were relieved to leave the confines of the Nurses’ Home, because we were all independently thinking, Something really does not want us in here.

After this, Rob had to return home (to his wife and new baby – a reasonable excuse, and it'd gone 2am). Patrick and I were left to wait for the security guards. There was no way we were going back into the Nurses’ Home that we’d been effectively chased out of, so we returned to the main hospital, which was still creepy-feeling but benign by comparison. We even went down below, into the rooms that allegedly served as the hospital’s morgue, in preference to re-entering the Nurses’ Home. It wasn’t till the two guards arrived that we braved going inside, quickly packed up our DV camera system and left the site without delay.

Reviewing the DV camera footage showed nothing paranormal, only the usual drifting dust orbs lit up by the cameras’ infrared LEDs. There was no further movement of the door, but at least the video confirmed there were no human intruders in the Nurses’ Home; we three Strange Occurrences investigators were the only living souls on the site, as we’d thought. And if we can rule out wind gusts, what could have slammed that small door so hard, twice, and not been seen?

At the time, we hadn’t heard of the ‘Sister Slipper’ entity, an urban legend so called for the sound of her slippers scuffing the hospital’s wooden floors late at night. Perhaps, in life, it was her responsibility to guard the nurses’ quarters from intruding males with one thing on their minds. Perhaps she even maintained this responsibility after her passing. If so, her methods worked fairly effectively on the three of us!

Central section of Fever Hospital, 2011. Photo: James Gilberd

Further investigations

The following year we conducted two more investigations at the old Fever Hospital, in April and October 2011, but neither time were we allowed into the Nurses’ Home, since it was a building site and so was unsafe. (We think we were let in by mistake the first time.)

The 2011 investigations of the main hospital buildings were quite similar to each other, with only minor, unsubstantiated activity during the investigation period. It wasn’t until after 1.30am when unexplained thumping sounds were heard. By this time, on both occasions, most of the team had already left, and we’d packed up our gear ready for when the guards came to lock up.

On our final investigation, when the guard did finally show up we told him what we’d heard and we did a patrol of the hospital with him, looking for any sign of intruders. There was none, but the guard’s comments were interesting. First, he was surprised we’d even waited round for him. He said he’d been here before for people who were supposed to have stayed late but they’d always abandoned the place before he arrived (presumably out of fear). Also, when he’d been there with a colleague a week ago they’d heard a heavy, metallic scraping, “like a car engine being dragged across the floor.” I thought of the old medical gurney, which was mysteriously found in a different room in the main hospital each time we visited, though it was likely to have been moved by people using the building for other things such as video and photo shoots, or just larking about.

West wing corridor of Fever Hospital, 2011. Photo: James Gilberd

That’s as far as we got with paranormal investigations of the Fever Hospital. It was a combination of bad luck and bad management (on my part) that we never captured hard evidence to back up the experiences we had there (apart from a sound recording of some indistinct, distant thumping). Each time, things happened near the end of the investigation when we were either no longer sufficiently alert and/or had already packed up our gear and were ready to leave. The door slamming incident happened off camera and we had not long since switched off our sound recorders.

The trouble with things happening at the end of a long investigation, when most people are tired or have already left, is the lack of will and personnel to check things out properly and safely. If the thumping sounds in the corridor had been heard earlier, with the whole team present and all recording gear operating, we might have either found the natural cause of the noises (maybe it was just possums playing in the ceiling, the sound magnified by the acoustics and the stillness of night) or else recorded something truly astonishing.

Hexagonal orb in the claustrophobic area where we found the dying smoke alarm. The hexagonal shape comes from the partially stopped down lens aperture. (See my previous article, ‘Photography and the Paranormal’ for more about orbs.) Photo: James Gilberd

Hysteria

Hysteria is often a problem in paranormal investigations when there is a contingent of the team who lack experience of being in creepy old buildings at night. The power of suggestion can combine with knowledge of reported paranormal events to be triggered by some small, easily explainable event, with the result of emotional overload when the imagination runs hot. I certainly remember being more than a little nervous inside places like old gaols and hospitals during our earlier night-time investigations, until I became used to it. (Lesson learned: team leaders, make sure less experienced investigators are teamed up with old hands.)

The first time we investigated the Fever Hospital, we arrived early in the afternoon at the same time as a group of students, models and photographers from the design & fashion schools of the local university. They had planned to work around outside the hospital grounds but the bucketing rain prevented it. We invited them in to do their shoot while we did our reconnaissance of the site and set up our cameras, an offer they happily took up.

Some of the students joined us as we initially explored the site. In one rather claustrophobic area in the west wing there was a strange, repetitive sound, a bit like suppressed, thin coughing made by someone with TB (you might imagine). One of the young students following us was in tears from fright before we discovered the source of the strange sound. It was a smoke alarm on the last legs of its battery power, making a weird, wheezing sound every two minutes.

Thing is, it’s easy to let your imagination get the better of you in such places, even during the daytime. We had instances during all three investigations of people sensing the presence of something, seeing movement or shadows in their peripheral vision, or otherwise individually perceiving things that could not be confirmed by anyone else or substantiated by sound recording, photography or other hard evidence-gathering methods. We always note these observations and feelings when they occur, in case they start to form a pattern with others sensing similar things later on. If this happens, we have to ensure the experiences are truly independent, otherwise the subsequent observations can be written off because of foreknowledge or suggestion.

Front and east wing of the Fever Hospital, viewed from upstairs in the Nurses’ Home, 2010. Photo: James Gilberd

Site history

The Wellington Fever Hospital was built in 1919 on a hill overlooking the main public hospital in Newtown, as an isolation facility for patients with infectious diseases. In the 1940s it shifted to catering for tuberculosis cases. The building is laid out V-shape, with deep verandahs for patients to sit out in Wellington’s fresh air and sunshine, above the smog of coal fires. The central wing was added in the early 1970s. From some angles the Queen Anne-style building appears more like a resort than a hospital. Except we know that an awful lot of people would have died there in the 60 years it operated as a hospital.

The complex lay empty from 1981 to 1987, when it was taken over by Wellington Polytechnic to serve as their music school. When jazz bassist Paul Dyne began teaching there in 1989, he was surprised to see a face staring out at him from the old Nurses’ Home (the separate, two-storey building at the south of the site, not used by the music school). He later learned there were people squatting in that building. [From The Wellingtonian newspaper, ‘Sister Slipper and other spooky tales’, 24/6/2011.]

In 2014, after another long period of abandonment, the old hospital became the new HQ for the Wellington SPCA. They've made excellent use of a site that was slowly deteriorating due to weather and vandalism and was always an arson risk. The main hospital with its three wings has been earthquake-strengthened and transformed into a modern facility, so is now no longer suitable for ‘our purpose’.

We found a set of plans lying around. The Nurses’ Home is the building at the bottom, connected to the main hospital by a covered path. The angled rooms protruding from the east and west wings are bathrooms, supported by brick arches – a unique architectural feature. The supposed morgue is below the left-most protrusion of the hospital (halfway up on the plan).

Earlier encounters

The squatters must’ve been there long-term. In October 1997 I went by myself up to the hospital for a look-see. The main hospital was locked up and the Nurses’ Home was boarded up with sheets of plywood. Out of curiosity I pulled gently on the board covering the main entrance to the Nurses’ Home and to my surprise it swung open. I entered with trepidation, which was justified. Not because of ghosts (which I was not particularly interested in at that time) but because of the obvious signs of illegal occupation. The disconcerting graffiti suggested the squatters were pretty screwed up and might even be Satanists (or so I thought at the time). With my trusty pocket 35mm film camera I hastily took a few photos on each level of the building then left before the occupants returned, as I had no desire to meet them.

Photo taken in the kitchen of the Nurses’ Home on 35mm film in October 1997. Photo: James Gilberd

It was in August 2010, long after the jazz musicians and the squatters had left the building, that I found myself leading a fully equipped team of paranormal investigators into the abandoned Fever Hospital. Aside from some second-hand tales of music students having unpleasant experiences after dark — incidents involving uncanny footsteps and other strange noises heard in the corridors, and unexplained slamming of doors — we didn’t have any particulars to go on. That was until Rob Wilson came to light. He’d contacted us via our website, asking if we were planning to investigate the Fever Hospital and if so, could he come along. I met Rob to discuss this prospect over a coffee and found he’d had an interesting experience in the place.

He told me that some years earlier, when he’d been working as a security guard, he and a colleague (a large man of Nordic origin) were checking the upstairs of the Nurses’ Home when his colleague suddenly took fright and fled at great speed. Rob couldn’t see anything, but assumed whatever caused his massive colleague to panic so would have to be something pretty major, so he decided he’d better leave as well. At this time the only exit was an external fire escape from the window of Room 15 (upstairs, at the south corner). As Rob headed for this room the door slammed right in his face. To make matters worse the door handle fell out, on the inside! Luckily Rob is the type of bloke who’s always prepared. Using his handy Swiss army knife he was able to get the door open and exit the building. When we met, Rob still didn’t know what it was he’d fled from but he was curious and keen to find out.

So Rob’s introduction to paranormal investigation with the Strange Occurrences team turned out to be one of the spookier and more memorable nights we’ve had (usually nothing much happens), and he had an experience that was somewhat similar to his initial one, perhaps vindicating it.

Rob checking out upstairs in the Nurses’ Home, 2010. Photo: James Gilberd

Some thoughts on the art of paranormal investigation

I guess it’s wanting to experience this type of thing – exploring abandoned, creepy old buildings that have a rich supply of anecdotes and urban legend about them, and maybe getting a chill/thrill – that attracts people to paranormal investigation. They either look to join an existing team with equipment and some experience, or it motivates them to form their own team.

In the ten years since co-founding our paranormal group (now somewhat grandiosely named the New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society) I’ve had a certain amount of experience and plenty of time to mull it over. Naturally a few questions arise, such as:

How much use, really, is it to ‘investigate’ old buildings looking for ghosts?

What are the chances of capturing evidence that will demonstrate the existence of ghosts as a phenomenon to an even moderately critical public, let alone the scientific community?

Are we even looking in the right kind of places?

Is it possible to apply something approaching Scientific Method to paranormal investigation, or are we (almost by definition), stuck forever in the realm of pseudoscience?

But aside from these soul-searching questions (pardon the pun), exploring scary old buildings like the Wellington Fever Hospital is great fun. And if we can’t have a bit of fun out of a thing, what’s the point in it? Fishing, for example, isn’t just about catching food; it’s the experience of it, the outdoor elements, mateship, the equipment, the hunt, the thrill and skill of landing a great fish. And the bragging about it afterwards, of course.

Photo taken in front room of the Nurses’ Home, on 35mm film in October 1997. Photo: James Gilberd

Author's note

I’ve had ten years of engrossing entertainment from the paranormal, a path which has led me to study things that previously were not even on my radar, and I’ve met a lot of interesting, cool and very nice people in the process, and visited places that I would not otherwise have set foot in. This is satisfying for reasons similar to why Urban Explorers enjoy what they do. (Urbex is a semi-illegal activity we ‘legitimate’ paranormal investigators publicly frown upon but privately envy.)

As I said in my first article for this magazine – ‘Photography and the Paranormal’ – I know very much less about the paranormal than I do about photography (which is my profession). And I don’t have any faith in the existence of anything classed as paranormal. For me, it’s not enough to just know that a thing exists; I want to find out if it even exists, and only then the how and why of its existence. So as well as having fun, the challenge is trying to find answers to those big questions about aspects of nature and human personality that remain unsolved, some of which are not even regarded as serious questions by people whose views are restricted by certain paradigms. But that’s another article.

- James Gilberd, January 2016, for 'Ectoplasmic Residue' and the New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society

I couldn't spend a couple of days (working) in the reputedly haunted St James Theatre, Wellington, without getting a little curious. As official photographer for the 10th Webstock conference (here are some of my photos), I could legitimately access most areas of the building, including the upper seating levels, and backstage and below the stage (which is all new or renovated).

The old stairs to the boxes overlooking the stage were the most interesting, and were also relatively quiet. The stairs on the right (looking towards the stage) were ho-hum, but the ones on the left side felt quite odd, more so nearer the top. There was too much noise and not enough time to investigate properly, but I felt something oppressive about the LH stairs that wasn't noticeable in the RH stairs, depsite their being an architectual mirror image. It was just that feeling of tightness in the chest and perhaps the sense of a presence - of being observed - that some of you will be familiar with. It was the only area of the historic theatre I felt it in. (I didn't spend much time on the top level of seating this year, but I did last year. I find that vertigo overpowers anything else I might feel there!)

The photos below were taken during the conference's after party, so there was pounding music from a DJ reverberating up the stairwells. An EVP session was thus impossible but I would've liked to have done one. It would be nice if there was an opportunity to spend some quiet time the old theatre with a few other Strange Occurrences team members.

I don't think these cellphone photos show anything, they're just for the record. The photos without LED flash are underexposed and blurry. And as we've observed, the poorer quality the photo, the more likely people are to see "something" in it!

Partly with this in mind, I decided to not take my big DSLR camera with me up the dusty old stairs. Also, as I'd already shot a few thousand frames on it during the week, having it in my hand felt like just more work and I'd knocked off by this time - around 7.30pm. It's definitely better to be relaxed and not thinking about other stuff - like work - if you want to try to pick up on anything that might just, in the most subtle way, be present.